Reporting current affairs concerning Sweden, Israel and the Jews, making underreported issues available for the non-Swedish speaking world.

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Israel Boycott Fails

As was previously mentioned in this blog the Consumer Cooperative Society for Western Sweden (Konsument föreningen Väst—KF Väst) recently called upon their nation-wide grocery store chain “Coop Forum” to boycott Israeli products. The Swedish Cooperative Union (Kooperativa förbundet - KF) – has responded: there will be no boycott of Israeli products.

When the three motions supporting the boycott of Israel were agreed upon, only 425 out of 350,000 members from the Consumer Cooperative society for Western Sweden were present.

As reported in the English-language Swedish daily The Local, the reason as to why the Swedish Cooperative Union rejected KF Väst’s call for a boycott is:

"KF's and Coop's criteria in selecting suppliers pays no heed to nationality. According to KF policy a boycott of trade with individual countries is determined by Sweden's government and parliament or the EU and/or the UN."

The Consumer Association that initially called for the boycott of Israeli products is the largest out of the 47 consumer cooperative societies that make up the Swedish Cooperative Union, which has more than 3 million members.

Only a small percentage of the members of KF Väst were present at the initial meeting which called for an Israeli boycott. It seems that the outcome of the meeting reflected not the position of the whole of Western Cooperative Society, but the radical politics of a few members who have a distorted anti-Israeli agenda. This shows yet again that small groups of Israeli hate-mongers try to smear Israel's image. These extremists resort to dishonest and devious tactics to impose their political will on large organizations, which by a “Vast” majority, do not share their hateful agenda.